A note about “Midnight Rendezvous, Boston”

This poem is a lighthearted commemoration of the first and so far only time Anita and I attended Arisia in Boston, a sci-fi con that takes place in the dead of winter (rather inconvenient if you’re driving from Virginia.) That was in 2002, so maybe things play differently now, but when we were there I observed two local quirks of note. One, all Bostonians go out on the town wearing black from head to toe. Two, the way Bostonians handle things that are off-kilter — such as a man in a satyr costume (shirtless, with horns) lounging in a hotel lobby, or a woman (in the real life instance, my wife) having dinner in a posh restaurant in a full-blown nature spirit outfit complete with antlers and a mantle made of leaves — is to act as if they’re not there. How could I resist having fun with that?